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Injecting insulin
Injecting insulin for diabetes
In the Netherlands, about 1.2 million people have diabetes. 1 When someone has diabetes, not enough insulin is produced to process blood glucose. This increases the blood glucose value.
Insulin ensures that blood glucose is absorbed into the cells. In someone without diabetes, the body produces just enough insulin to allow the glucose to be absorbed into the body’s cells.
In order to get the right level of insulin in the body, medication can be taken in some cases (depending on the type of diabetes). When medication is no longer possible, these people have to switch to injecting insulin with an insulin pen. This must be done very accurately.
How does injecting with a pen work?
Insulin must be injected directly into the body to enter the bloodstream. The needle is injected into the subcutaneous fat tissue. The most commonly used places for this are the abdomen, legs and buttocks. As soon as the insulin enters the bloodstream, the blood glucose level drops.
Determining blood glucose levels
Before you start injecting, you need to determine the blood sugar level. This way you know how much insulin you have to inject. Because not everyone has a handy sensor on the upper arm with a scanner, it is important to know how to measure the blood glucose level with a finger prick. Do you know how to do this? View the course Determining Blood Glucose Value here.
What can go wrong when spraying?
When insulin is injected in the wrong way, it can mean that not enough insulin enters the bloodstream, or that the insulin is absorbed too quickly. This can cause complications.
Two other common mistakes are not delivering the insulin at the right time and reading the unit incorrectly.
For example, the time of injection depends on the form of insulin, among other things. There are three variants:
- Fast-acting works within 15 minutes and works for a maximum of 4 hours.
- Medium acting starts working after about 30 to 60 minutes. The effect lasts up to 8 hours after the injection.
- Long-acting needs up to two hours before it starts working. After that, it works for about 24 hours.
That is why it is extremely important that you, as a healthcare professional or caregiver, master the correct technique and know the theory for injecting with an insulin pen. It will also certainly happen that as a healthcare professional you have to explain and teach patients how to inject insulin themselves.
Do you want to be sure that you have mastered the right theory and also know how to inject insulin with an insulin pen? Start today with the online 3D simulation course, based on the Vilans protocols, and you will learn both theory and practice!
Common mistakes injecting insulin
A study was done among 200 people with diabetes. These participants had to inject a doll with an insulin pen. Here are the most common mistakes:
- More than three-quarters (79.5%) used the pen or refill after the expiration date.
- 70.5% did not change injection sites. So they injected in the same place.
- 63% of the participants massaged the skin after the injection.
The number of complications increased sharply with these common mistakes. In addition, the researchers discovered that there were also more complications such as:
- The wrong length of the injection needle was used for the injection area.
- If a new needle was not used every time every injection. 2
What are the consequences of a wrong injection?
If the injection pen is used incorrectly, this can have unpleasant consequences. For example, 30.8% of insulin syringes suffer from lipoatrophy. In this case, the fatty tissue disappears where you inject and you get pits or dimples. The risk of lipoatrophy increases, among other things, when there is insufficient variation between injection sites and when the needles are used incorrectly. 3
Lipoatrophy increases the risk of blood sugar fluctuations. People with lipoatrophy also have an increased risk of unexplained hypoglycemia. 4 That sudden drop in blood sugar (known as hypos) can even cause a person to faint or fall into a coma.
Are you sure you don’t make these mistakes? Want to refresh your knowledge? Start today with the unique online 3D simulation course, based on the Vilans Kick protocols, and you will learn both theory and practice!
